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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

State Shintō(国家神道,Kokka Shintō
?) has been called the state religion of
the Empire of
Japan. The idea of "State Shinto" was never conceived of during
the imperial era, but was first proposed in 1970 by the postwar
religious scholar Shigeyoshi Murakami to classify those Shinto ideals, rituals and
institutions that were created by the government to promote the divinity of the emperor and the uniqueness
of Japan (kokutai).[1]
Murakami's book proved to be one of the most popular books about
religion in postwar Japanese history. While the concept has since
been considered by scholars to be overreaching the actual scope of
government interference in religion, the fact that government did
interfere cannot be denied.[2]

Contents

History

In the late Edo
period, numerous scholars of kokugaku believed that Shintō could
become a unifying agent to center the country around the Emperor while a process of modernization
was undertaken. After the Meiji Restoration, the new imperial
government needed to rapidly modernize the polity and economy of
Japan, and the Meiji oligarchy felt that those goals
could only be accomplished through a strong sense of national unity
and cultural identity.

Establishment

In 1871, all Shintō shrines throughout Japan were declared to be
property of the central government, were assigned an official rank
within a hierarchy and received a subsidy for their upkeep. Shrines
were divided into twelve levels with the Ise Shrine (dedicated to Amaterasu, and thus symbolic of the
legitimacy of the Imperial family) at the top.

Furthermore, all citizens were required to register as a
parishioner of their local shrine, and each parishioner of a local
shrine was automatically also a parishioner of the Ise Shrine. This
was a major reverse from the Edo period, in which families were required
to register with Buddhist temples, rather than Shintō shrines.

In 1872, an Office of Shintō Worship(神祇官,Jingikan
?) was established to develop and
promote new government-centered rites of worship, and all Shintō priests officially
became government employees. Thus, from a legal perspective, State
Shintō was not a religion and its values came under the heading of
moral instruction rather than religious teaching.[3]

This concentrated on the more important shrines; folk Shintō
practices were mostly left unmolested and various fringe Shintō
movements dating from the Edo period were allowed to continue under
the rubric Sect Shintō.

In 1890, the Imperial Rescript on
Education was issued, and students were required to ritually
recite its oath to "offer yourselves courageously to the State" as
well as protect the Imperial family. The practice of emperor
worship was further spread by distributing imperial portraits for
esoteric veneration. All of these practices, used to fortify
national solidarity through patriotic centralized observance at
shrines, gave pre-war Japanese nationalism a tint of mysticism and cultural
introversion.[4]

Article 28 of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan
reaffirmed the privileged position of Shintō, but also guaranteed
freedom
of religion “within limits not prejudicial to peace and order
and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects”. In practice,
this meant that religious groups were required to receive
government approval and that their doctrines and rituals came under government scrutiny.[5]

In practice, this official policy distinction is sometimes
blurred or overlooked. For example in the context of Confucian
texts; as Hiroi Takase notes, 'Confucianism is a religion, yet Japanese
people do not see it that way'.[7]